This n That Thursday

• I have not seen or heard the Harlem Shake.  And I could care less.
• Why does spinach make your teeth all fuzzy?
• Did you know that it is good luck to carry a green purse?
• I am obsessed with vegetable juicing.
• So not interested in that new Oz movie at all.
• Have you guys ever heard of oil pulling?  It is really fascinating.
• I am so sad about Valerie Harper's brain cancer.  I always thought she was so cool.
• Should we believe all those new warnings about gel manicures?  Because I love them.
• I really like Chanel Bleu, a men's cologne.  For myself.  Do I dare?
• When Dora and I were out on a walk yesterday, we passed by a garage that had paintings hung all around on the walls.  In an arranged way.  That was some man cave.
• Speaking of Dora, she has a new fancy Martha Stewart collar.  And some spring colored poopy pick-up bags.  She feels really posh.
• I went to a bourbon tasting last night.  I have a headache this morning.
• I think I will use the word "posh" a lot today.

This n That Thursday

More things I love about being back in Tennessee when I'm not hunkered down during tornado warnings:

• My CSA baskets in the dead of winter.

• Walks with Dora at Berry Farms. 

• Fundraiser Songwriter Nights.  Especially when your brother is a sponsor of the Patron's Party.  And also when Lee Greenwood is there, joined by his sons, who attend BGA, and they give you chills.  Turn it up.

This 'n That Thursday

• It was pert near 70 here yesterday.  "Pert near" means almost for those north of here.
• In other words, I wonder if I will ever stop sweating.
• I'm still church shopping, but I went to a beautiful Holiday Healing service last night.
• Dora got her hair done yesterday.  I get mine tomorrow, if the world doesn't end first.  At least Dora can go out on a high note.
• I am ready for Christmas.
• I am also ready for March.
• What are some good books on iTunes?  I need lots of stimulation for our drive to Connecticut.
• Wait, Downton Abbey is on the same night as the Alabama/Notre Dame game?  How did that happen?
• I am writing my first real estate blog post today.  I'm nervous.
• Below is Dora's report card from her spa day yesterday.  She made the Honor Roll.  But I'm a little concerned that she only got 9's for behavior skills.  We need to have a chat.

• Happy Friday Eve!  Be careful out there.

Fully Tennessee-fied:

This 'n That Thursday

Settling in as a new redneck:

• I am 99.9% sure that Dora and I encountered a mountain lion last week.
• There is also a bobcat nearby.
• And a pack of coyotes.
• The sharks at Cape Cod are starting to look downright benevolent.
• I am seriously thinking about getting a pistol.
• And a cute holster.
• Dora hates thunder storms.
• A woman told me I had an accent the other day.
• That's funny, because I always had an accent while I live in Connecticut.
• All of this has made me feel a little discombobulated.
• But not as much as cheering for the Giants around here.
• The job interview last week was not for me.
• I hope to do some serious networking soon.  With a heavy accent.  Of some sort.
• We had a storm last night that scared even me.  Dora was on my lap the whole time.
• Tonight, my nephew has a Thursday Night Lights game.  On TV.  I'm going.  It will be 90 degrees at kickoff. Go BGA!
• And the opposing team has an amazing band and dancers.  I'll bring my camera.
• I love it here.

Monday Morning Musings

Blather:

• You have to walk up three flights of stairs to get to my townhouse.  I am regaining some muscle.
• Lots of change in this move back to Tennessee.
• Dreading the DMV.
• Church shopping is interesting.  I have to keep perspective that I will never replace St. Paul's on the Green.
• Dora gets her stitches (deer kick) out this morning.  She is excited, but she doesn't know why.
• I get cable and Internet tomorrow.  I am excited, and I do know why.
• The local farmers' market here in Franklin is amazing.  
• I think I may be allergic to my sisal rug.
• My favorite vitamin is D3.
• New food obsession these days: vidalia onions.  I work them into every meal.  Yes, breakfast was egg whites, vidalia and broccoli.
• Did I mention that I get cable tomorrow?  I love listening to NPR, but I want to watch the olympics instead of listening to them.  gah
• Have a great Monday.  What are you doing?

Tuesday Tidbits

• After going to meet my furniture in Tennessee, I am back in Connecticut until Saturday.
• On Sunday, our beloved dog Dora was kicked by a deer and seriously hurt.  She underwent surgery, and has a jagged gash on her right side.  She also has a drain that will come out tomorrow.  The stitches will remain for two weeks.  The good news is that she doesn't have any broken ribs or any internal damage.  She will be okay.  But it sure scared all of us.  She will be well enough for the car trip to Tennessee on Saturday.
• My new place is smaller than I remembered it being, but I love it.  And my storage unit is very full! My sister-in-law has declared the new place "quaint."  I have to agree.
• I desperately need to get my hair done.
• I had over 300 emails in my spam folder this morning.
• I am obsessed with Instagram.
• I am also very, very tired.

Balls

Yesterday, we hosted 4 lovely young girls overnight.

They were part of a visiting youth choir of 60+ members

from Charlotte, North Carolina,

and the concert was absolutely glorious.

The Bird and Augie were away, so we put their rooms to good use.

I had them clean and organize things for our houseguests.

And after the concert, I brought the girls here.

It was late; I got them cookies and milk, and tucked them in.

This morning, they had to be up and back at church by 7.

Did I say the girls were lovely?

They were.

Very.

And so, after I returned home at 7: 15 from delivering these sweet girls?

I found this charming display on the back of Augie's door.

Yes. Basketball shorts. And boxers.

These fancy boxers...

So, um, yeah.

Happy Friday, y'all.

Nashville on my Mind

There is so much horror out there in the world that I just want to power down sometimes. And then you come across an article like this one. It reaffirms my faith in our ability to do the right thing, and it makes me ever so proud to be a product of this environment:

We Are Nashville

By

Patten Fuqua

Published: May 4, 2010

Allow me a moment to step away from the usual voice of this website.

What I am about to write has absolutely nothing to do with hockey.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite possibly the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.

source

This-n-That Thursday

Things that make me Southern:

• I know the difference between a redneck and a good ol' boy.
• A profound love for white sandy beaches. 
• I know that a gentleman does not wear his baseball cap inside.
• Iced tea.
• I get that SEC Football is a religion.
• A deep and abiding understanding of buttermilk.
• Country ham and red eye gravy.
• Grape Nehi.
• I know how long "directly" is.
• Grandmother's biscuits.
• I know how to clean a 12 gauge shotgun.
• Finger bowls.
• Finer than frog hair is a meaningful way to answer "How are you?"

What'd I miss?

Mama's Got a New Look

Due to the incredible talents of  Keetha and Daryl, Mama had a facelift.  Kinda.  I feel like a new woman.  

Keetha lives and writes her fun blog from the great state of Mississippi.  Where I was born, one frosty morn.  Look away, look away, look away, Dixieland.  Wait, I am getting distracted.  Anyway, when she posted a shot she took of this old building with the co'cola and the 'Pause' on the side, I knew it was meant to be.  She happily sent it to me.  Only, I had no idea how to get it to the place where it now proudly sits.

Enter Daryl--an Upper West-Side;) photography and technical expert.  She graciously offered to look at it and fix it up for me.  People: she gave me many fun choices.  I had a hard time deciding because they were all so good.  So, here you go.  Whaddaya think?  Cool, huh?

Oh, and by the way, please visit Daryl here to read about a shelter called NY Pet-I-Care, and to help get funds for homeless cats.  It's free.  All you have to do is click.  Thank you in advance.  Both Daryl and I are suckers for helpless animals. As are the rest of you;)

Friday Fun

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
The South
North Central
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The Inland North
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Flea had this little exercise up on her site yesterday.  I was intrigued, so I took the test. It appears I have no accent.  That's funny because I was born in Mississippi, raised in Tennessee, and now live in Connecticut.  All I ever hear is how southern I sound.  Go figure.  The bright side in this is that I have a good voice for TV and radio.  This is helpful since I am looking for something productive to do with myself when my babies go off to college.  So be on the lookout for me.  I'll apparently be the one without any accent.

This quiz is highly specialized and scientific.  Very detailed.  If you're looking for something to do today, or just taking a break from all your spring cleaning, you should try it out, and let me know your results!

Self Explanatory

My new personal logo and apology for everything naughty I've ever done or will do. The end.

Ghost Stories

Tammy over at The Color of Home has been writing some great "we are not alone" posts. I must say that these have brought up some interesting memories of my own. And since everyone already thinks I'm a little off my rocker, I thought I'd share some of my stories.

I'm sure we've all heard the slumber party ghost stories of ill-fated camping trips or careless hitchhikers. We had those, too, but I grew up in Middle Tennessee, and we had lots of ghosts. All kinds of ghosts, and some of them were really loud. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that the main route to the Mississippi River, The Natchez Trace, ran smack-dab through the middle of my town. Another, was that one of the bloodiest battles of The Civil War, occurred there November 30, 1864.

Because it was such a popular thoroughfare, robbers were a frequent hazard along The Trace, and many unfortunate travelers met a tragic end during their journey. As teenagers, we were always down by the river at night waiting for one of the most famous ones of our area, the screaming woman, to pay us a visit. The story goes that she was murdered by robbers after watching her entire family die first. You never saw her as a woman, she was either a green light, or just a screaming noise. Now, we almost always went when there was no moon, of course, and the one night I encountered her she was only a scream. Just the same, I never went back. One night, she came as a screaming light to some friends, and for a brief moment, their running car would not move either forward or backward, as if she were holding it. They never went back there either.

Most Civil War towns are full of lingering spirits, and one in particular lived in my friend Donnie's antebellum house. This ghost was a confederate soldier named Jeremiah, and he was mortally wounded and brought back to the house, which was being used as a hospital, after the November battle. Jeremiah was basically friendly, but he had some issues. He lost a leg in the battle, so he hopped around the upstairs halls at night. Donnie would call from his room: "Go back to bed Jeremiah," and he would turn and hop away. One night we were there watching television downstairs, and the three of us simultaneously turned around to see pairs of socks being silently thrown over the upstairs balustrade. No one was home but us.

One other visit I had was with Catherine. Catherine was the great-great aunt of some friends of mine, and she lived with them because her furniture was in their house. It seems she needed to be with her things. One night I asked who the woman in the living room with the white shirt and dark hair was, and the whole family fell silent. I liked her, she was serene and beautiful, and you could just feel her whole presence.

I Like These Girls

Hey Annie and Jules, let's see if they'll come to cocktail corner. They look like they would be fun.

Oy Y'all

One thing you should know about me is that I started out life as a Southern Girl. My momma was one of those who would rather have you display your perfect party manners than feed you. And she was a nice one. After I left her watchful eyes and moved to New York, I let go of some of the protocol; just ask my husband how genteel I can be.

Even still, I have now lived in the New England 'burbs for 25 years, and you'd think I'd be accustomed to the people who just don't give a crap about anyone else. But I can't get over it. I can't get over the four men today who let the doors of the pharmacy, the bookstore and the grocery store SLAM in my face; AND MY HANDS WERE FULL. Yes, I know I'm shouting, but didn't their mommas teach them anything? Where's the love people?

Phew, is it hot in here?